Oh, it's a hard problem no doubt! Hopefully Ben's new votekicking UI will magically solve everything, though. Ha ha sigh.

@Enari:
I think there's gotta be a better solution than that... It would be a sad eventuality if, due to griefing, such measures needed to be introduced for the main game.
Maybe have a gamemode where you have ranks etc, but I feel that there could be better solutions.

@Nothings:
Ah, I see. There's also the people who just go around destroying the pre-built custom buildings if there are any, or team forts. I would be interested in hearing what sort of solutions you think could help prevent the griefing..
We've started discussing it in the IRC channel ( http://www.aceofspadeswiki.com/index.php?title=IRC ) - it'd be nice to see your face there to discuss things like this in more detail.

I always play with myself, it's the only way I'm able to code Serverbot to work properly half the time.

Your ignorance is astounding, Hubble. Ben said he hadn't seen it and thought it unlikely, so I responded with a list of what griefing I have seen to give it a sense of proportion. It's got nothing to do with Minecraft.

(Or maybe you're offended because you're one of those tent-campers who I called dicks. Well, enjoy playing with yourself.)

Shooting the enemy team must be annoying for them, so that would be a dick move too, right 'nothings'? This isn't Minecraft.

I personally havent seen the bridge blocking tactic... it seems to require a bit of effort and a boring wait for a pretty lame 'payoff.' I think the majority of potential griefers would put their effort somewhere else.

In maybe four-to-eight hours of playtime on several maps this weekend, I probably saw two or three major griefing sessions (there were no doubt more, esp. on the other team, that I didn't see). At least one of them was someone doing the bridge blocking thing, repeatedly, successfully, and we still hadn't kicked him after about ten minutes. That was on Mesa, where bridges are super-important. But nowadays taking ten-twenty minutes to kick a griefer seems pretty normal. (And I don't know if any of them actually ended up getting kicked or if they actually just quit.)

The major griefing tactics right now seem to be bridge blocking to TK, destroying same-team structures (you can TK them if you happen to be around, but this is less effective when you don't have 32 people; e.g. I managed to kill a griefer AFTER he brought down the intel, which was a little too late) and grenade spam/tunnelling around/under the tent (same issue with needing to be around).

Then there's stuff that's obviously from the same mentality, even if it's not same-team griefing: people writing fake messages to trick people into pressing 'b' or 'g', people tunnelling under the enemy tent just to be annoying (it may slow down intel capture a tiny bit but it's clear the people are doing it just to be dicks), spawn camping, and probably other stuff I've forgotten.

>mfw greentexting o AoS forums.

I like the new update, bar the auto step thing. Make it so you automatically grab edges in the air instead? It's a little disorienting climbing a hill and seeing things jitter all over the place.

@TheGrandmaster:
I would love to have in-game admins and mods, right now i have remote desktop open, and need to alt+tab to kick people...

@Triplefox:
I see where you are going.. maybe if you need to kill people to be able to change the map (if you get 1 kill you may place or destroy 10 blocks)

@bcoolface:
Great, thanks for detailing that!
I've not seen the bridge blocking either, and I agree that for a griefer it's rather a waste of time..

@Triplefox:
Forcing people to 'earn' their right to change anything in a sandbox game would not be right in my opinion. Sure, votekicking is slightly out-of-the-way as it stands, but people seeing a big box saying 'press f12 for yes and f11 for no' could get rid of griefers very easily. There could also be a forced 1 minute gap between vote attempts as well.

A possibility: give some moderators the power to join any server and kick people. That might be a better temporary solution than team-killing.
Another possibility: allow server admins ('outside-of-game admins') to be able to set ingame admins that could kick anyone. This could be in the form of a humble .txt file that had a list of IP's of those set by an 'adm #ID' or 'adm #IP' command from server.exe.

Like I've said in other threads:

Griefing is a statistical problem; get "grief-free-hours" to 80% or more and the game is doing very well. As it is we're still at 10% because there's an endless stream of low-level griefers.

Votekicking is not an ideal solution, even if it's simpler to use, because it disrupts normal gameplay and asks a mostly-uninformed crowd to make a big decision.

TK adds an additional grief surface area and source of own-team rage, because it's satisfying to TK someone and humiliating for the person being TK'd. I have said from the start that we should remove the ability to cause block damage on friendly fire, not cause player damage.

Last of all, a dynamic that would favor "good" players over griefers is to make them build an investment in the game, by starting them off nearly unable to change the world, and giving them better construction/destruction powers with time played and points earned.

I mean the current TK system is just to holdover the situation until I can make a more intuitive votekicking interface... and with only a 25% threshold for votebans and admin bans already implemented, the most severe griefers are eliminated pretty quickly.

I personally havent seen the bridge blocking tactic... it seems to require a bit of effort and a boring wait for a pretty lame 'payoff.' I think the majority of potential griefers would put their effort somewhere else.

@bcoolface:
I've just spent some time trying to deal with griefers who weren't getting votekicked.
I found that teamkilling only spurs the griefers on, especially if there is more than one of them. They treat it as a kind of taunt, hitting a stray block before being able to aim and kill them (and if more than one: one taunts, the other removes blocks).

The only conclusion I can draw is: griefers must be kicked. There is nothing other than that which will stop them.

So.. why weren't they being votekicked? because people didn't know what was going on. Solution is obviously.. make it more obvious to everyone.
Take Soldat's votekicking for example: http://dardar.de/bilder/images/votekick.png

Since AoS currently does not have that kind of menu GUI (even though it would be nice to see in the future), there could be a '/votekick #ID <reason>' which then brought up a similar box, visible to all (the '<reason>' being optional, but encouraged).

That's my thoughts on the issue.

>miss
>get teamkilled

I think you mean

>missed and hit the same block 3 times within 5 seconds
>get teamkilled

here's an actual tk sploit:

>asshat obstructing bridge with blocks
>can't tk him as he's not destroying anything
>break the blocks asshat put in your way
>get tk'ed by asshat

>M
>F
>W

>Laughing
>Out
>Loud

>stop
>talking
>like
>this
>I
>don't
>under
>stand

Your "exploit" has always been possible, it's a problem with being able to switch sides, I don't see what TK has to do with it.

>huge fort
>no one seems to be coming back
>idk why
>use fort
>snipe
>miss
>get teamkilled
Some guy was abusing the new .49 teamkill.

Also, trying to break the new TK system:
>Intel tower!
>climb up to top
>surround edges
>dig down to very bottom
>dig tunnel
>mark tunnel
>switch sides
>use tunnel
>exploit'd